Elegy Redux
by kiernanfan
Summary: Welcome to a new world of XMen continuity, which follows up to 1996, and then takes a decided turn for the worse. FINAL CHAPTER UP: See how the XMen's World goes horribly wrong
1. Jean's Story

_(Here is the basic premise. This follows the basic continuity of the X-Men up to Uncanny X-Men #331 and X-Men #51 (early 1996). __This means that the whole Onslaught storyline is drastically shortened, and with a completely differently villain. The Dark Beast only confronts the real McCoy (sorry, bad pun) and does not take his place. (Instead he bluffs his way into the Avengers, and the X-Men don't have to worry about him.) And as you will see, some storylines we thought were the case in the Lobdell era turn out not to be entirely accurate. Depending on how well this goes, I may eventually write stories on other issues. But right now I am starting with Uncanny X-men #342. As you will see this story is in six parts, of which four are basically summaries of the first 33 years of the X-Men. After that, things start to change.)_

The Uncanny X-Men #342—Elegy Redux 

There was a good turnout at the funeral, but there were thirteen surrounding the grave.

My parents were behind me, more disconcerted than distraught. To be fair, they always knew their other son-in-law better. In a wheelchair, a bald man in his late forties, surprisingly handsome, should be shattered with grief at the death of the man he considered a son. Sometimes people age overnight on such news, but in this case he is calm, thoughtful, the wheels in his head turning as he seeks to mitigate the greatest disaster in his life. By contrast, the _real _father, once so handsome and brave, has visibly aged, his hair is half gray. On the other side, a young Jewish woman, barely an adult, buries her head in her hands; she restrains her sobs, but not her tears. But only a few of them are for him, most of them are for the others. By her side, a rather tall, rather large man tries to console her without getting too close. He was a pallbearer. Beside him, a tall Southern woman stands with her arm in a sling: recently three of her limbs were shattered, so she's recovering quite nicely. Beside her, is a man with messy blonde hair. Ordinarily he would look much more presentable, but he has two other funerals to attend today in Washington. (The dead can be so inconsiderate.) There are four other pallbearers by the grave; the fifth stepped back to make room for the others. The first two are my oldest and closest friends; one has forgone the mask he used to wear on these occasions. The other has spent most of his adult life in the others' shadow; now he looks stronger. The third man only looks like a demon; once you get to know him he looks more like Errol Flynn, with the soul of William Powell. Right now he is saying a Hail Mary under his breath. The fourth man is young, and a month ago I had never heard of him. He was nothing more than a listing in a ridiculously full encyclopedia. He would never have served as a pallbearer had circumstances been even slightly better. He is impeccably tailored; his family has lost much of its money but it always keeps up appearances. His face is cold, aristocratic, his eyes show little mercy or compassion.

"All my Life, it seemed that every time I turned around-I was losing people I loved: my folks, my brother Alex, the few friends I made at the orphanage. Each time, the loss hurt. Losing you was the loss I couldn't take. Jean, you're everything to me—as necessary as the air I breathe." More than five years ago you said those words over my grave. Now I repeat them over yours. My name is Jean Grey; your name was Scott Summers. And this is our story.

The tombstone reads Scott Summers 1966-1996.

In the beginning there were five of us. It's so hard to believe that now me, Henry and Bobby are the only ones left. I remember the first day when I showed up at Professor Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, and you offered me a chair. "That's not necessary," and I used my telekinesis to move one myself. I just seemed like an attractive teenager then surrounded by four admiring boys. In fact Hank and Bobby were never really interested in me. And they didn't know that I actually had telepathic powers, which were traumatized when I felt my friend Annie Richardson die after being hit by a car. That attracted me to Scott, the only orphan of the four. I think I loved him even then.

Of course, that was in the future. First off, we were the X-Men: Marvel Girl, Cyclops, the Beast, Iceman, and Angel, and we immediately had to confront our deadliest, most powerful foe—or so we thought. Magneto, who believed humans would not tolerate mutants and had to be conquered, had attacked an American army base. We were able to drive him off, rather remarkable in retrospect, since he was objectively far more powerful than us. Our next battles against the mutant teleporter the Vanisher, and Fred C. Dukes—The Blob did not go so well. In both cases we needed Professor X's help. Then Magneto reappeared with "The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants." By a strange coincidence it included two children that he never knew he had—Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch. Then there was Mortimer Toynbee, The Toad. He was not actually a bad man, but years of abuse as a child had made him a sycophant with a brutal streak.

And there was Jason Wyngarde—the illusion casting Mastermind.

We fought several battles against them, thwarting their plans but not really stopping them from making new ones. Then we discovered a new, more powerful entity: the Stranger. We all thought he was a mutant; in fact he was an inconceivably powerful alien. He turned Mastermind into some sort of living stone, and transported Magneto and the Toad back to his home world. Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch—not knowing Magneto was their father—believed they were no longer indebted to him and joined the Avengers.

In the next few months we would encounter new, dangerous enemies. First, there was Professor X's vindictive, spiteful stepbrother, Cain Marko, transformed by a mystical gem into the almost unstoppable Juggernaut. Then there were the giant anti-mutant robots the Sentinels. They had been formed by anthropologist Bolivar Trask, who ironically, feared his own mutant son Larry. We were able to stop them, at the cost of Trask's life. Magneto returned to attack us: he temporarily escaped from the Stranger's world; later he would escape permanently. We also faced Lucifer, the alien who crushed Professor X's legs. It was also during this time that we first encountered the strange conspiracy known as Factor Three. They had blackmailed future X-Man Sean Cassidy—the Banshee into working for them, but we were able to stop them.

By this time Cyclops had become the team leader. He had finally gotten the courage to tell me that he loved me. Meanwhile, we encountered new friends. The first was Vera Cantor. For a long time, she was Hank's girlfriend. Recently she came back into his life and out of the closet. I see her standing there by Amara Aquillia. At one point she wore contacts, but now she's back to her old glasses. The second was Candace "Candy" Southern. A superficial glance would think she was just a superficial debutante. But she was more than that: she was tough, brave. She was Warren's girlfriend and she would have made him a good wife. But that wasn't to be, and it was partially my fault. Shortly after Scott told me he loved me, Factor Three kidnapped Professor X. We eventually tracked them down to find old foes like the Vanisher, the Blob, Unus—and Mastermind. They were serving "The Mutant Master," and his henchman the Changeling, until we found out that he was actually an alien. Both teams turned on him and he killed himself.

Shortly after the Changeling visited Xavier and me. He was dying and he wanted to do something good. Xavier had recently received a premonition of a future evil and wanted to concentrate all his time to it. So he allowed the Changeling to take his place, and released my telepathic powers, while he went into seclusion. Keeping up this charade didn't last long. We encountered a strange underground being—Grotesk—who wanted revenge on humanity for destroying his race in an atomic explosion. In the course of the battle the Changeling died.

It was a strange experience. Scott was stunned, the others were upset, and they didn't realize that my copious tears were all an elaborate charade. That was the first time, I think, that I really lied to Scott. I even had to manipulate things with two cheap shysters from New York while explaining to the Professor's real friends and the government that he wasn't actually dead. We were briefly split apart, then reunited. Except for the Changeling and an annoying frat boy named Calvin Rankin who briefly had superpowers and who later unfortunately died, no-one else had belonged to the X-Men. That would change. First Bobby met a young woman, Lorna Dane, who had green hair but was otherwise apparently normal. But then the mutant Mesmero, thinking he was working for Magneto, but actually for a megalomaniac named Starr Saxon managed to transform her into Polaris, the mistress of magnetism.

We defeated him, and shortly thereafter, we met Scott's younger brother, Alex at his college graduation. I didn't know anything about him until shortly before the Changeling died. He was very intelligent, much more academically inclined than his older brother. He might have settled down and become a geology professor. But he possessed the ability to absorb and deploy cosmic powers. In doing so, he limited the abilities of another mutant, Pr. Ahmet Abdol—the Living Pharoah. By limiting Alex's access to cosmic radiation, Abdol was able to turn into the Living Monolith, a vastly more powerful being that we could only stop by freeing Alex. Shortly thereafter we faced the return of the Sentinels. Larry Trask, not knowing he was a mutant himself, rebuilt them in misguided revenge for his father's death. Scott managed to stop them by convincing them to face the source of mutation on Earth—the sun. We confronted other foes, Karl Lykos, Magneto again, as well as the Japanese mutant Sunfire, who had been manipulated by his fascist uncle to attack the United States. Then Professor X returned. The future evil was an unspeakably vicious and cruel alien race, the Z'nox. Even after all we've encountered, they are still the most vile creatures we have ever faced. By forming a telepathic union with humanity as a whole, and our own efforts, the Professor was able to drive them back into space, but at the same time formed a telepathic link with someone uncounted millions of light years away.

Then for a long time, very little happened. We encountered the fascistic Secret Empire, Lorna realized that she loved Alex and they decided to study geology together. Most of the rest of us studied courses in case we actually wanted to work for a living. And then Henry got his doctorate, left the team and worked for Roxxon corporation, only to realize that it wanted to control his special genetic extract for nefarious purposes. So he swallowed it, and instead of being the witty, intelligent strongman of the group, he was now the witty, intelligent strongman covered in blue fur with extra strength. I suppose I shouldn't make light of it, but considering the future metamorphosis we would face, he got off rather easy.

Of course, fate abhors a quiet life, and when the six remaining X-Men visited a South Pacific Island of Krakoa looking for a powerful mutant, and five of us were captured, Professor X and Scott set about finding a new team. They got Banshee and Sunfire to join us, and found five new mutants: the Canadian soldier Logan, whose super senses, uncanny healing factor, and unbreakable admantium bones made him the perfect Wolverine; the Russian farmer Peter Rasputin, would could turn into organic steel and became a Colossus. There was Kurt Wagner, the teleporting Nightcrawler; Ororo Munroe, who could master the weather as Storm, and the strong John Proudstar, Thunderbird. They returned to Krakoa, only to find that the island _was_ the mutant. We defeated it, using Lorna's powers to briefly cut off gravity and so fling it into space.

And then we all came home, and the original members of the team all left, except for Scott. That was not strictly true, I moved to New York and even had Ororo as a roommate. But I wasn't part of the team. Sunfire also left immediately, leaving Scott and the new sextet to fight Count Nefaria. He was a second tier megalomaniac, and indeed Professor X had little trouble stopping his plan to take over America's nuclear arsenal. But then Thunderbird tried to stop him from escaping and leaped on his plane. Nefaria teleported away harmlessly, but Thunderbird died in the crash.

Privately, I thought it was an incredibly stupid thing to do, but I kept my views to myself. At this time a new person entered our lives: Moira MacTaggert, the Professor's former lover, the winner of the Nobel Prize for her own scientific work, and, very peculiarly, the Professor's new housekeeper (Henry couldn't stop laughing when he heard how the Professor tried that ruse). But at this point we became involved in two conspiracies. When Professor X defeated the Z'Nox, he encountered telepathically an alien mind, the Sh'iar princess Lilandra, fleeing from her brother, the emperor D'Ken. D'Ken learned of the connection before Charles understood what it was, and sent his agent on Earth, "Erik the Red," to attack the X-Men, by brainwashing Lorna and Alex, now Polaris and Havok, into attacking us.

While dealing with that body blow, we encountered the second conspiracy. The Hellfire Club, a group of the world's wealthiest men and women, had secretly supported an anti-mutant fanatic named Steven Lang. He rebuilt the Sentinels, and they attacked us, taking me, Banshee and Wolverine to his space station. The other X-Men were able to rescue us, but the only way our shuttle could return to earth was for me to pilot it through a radiation storm. The radiation should have killed me; instead I burst from the ocean as the Phoenix. I was apparently more powerful than before, and I needed it, as Erik the Red through both Juggernaut and Banshee's mutant cousin, Black Tom Cassidy, against us. Then he revived Magneto, and finally convinced a herald of Galactus to attack us.

By then Lilandra had met Professor X, and oddly enough, both fell in love at first sight. Transported across the stars we learned that D'Ken has heard of a powerful crystal called the M'Krann Crystal. Essentially someone with way too much time on their hands had reduced an entire galaxy to the size of a pinprick and put it in the crystal. If the crystal broke, it became the ultimate black hole, destroying the universe. D'Ken just thought it was a weapon, and broke it. But my phoenix powers were so great I was able to rebuild it; rebuild it my with powers, and my love, and the love of the X-Men.

I put elaborate psychic dampers to control these new powers. Not longer after that we were all captured by Mesmero. Hank found us and rescued us, but then Magneto appeared and imprisoned us all in his Antarctic base. We managed to break free, thanks to Ororo's skill with locks. But the battle triggered a volcanic explosion. We and Hank were separated from the others, and each group thought the other dead. The two of us quickly returned to Xavier, and on learning of the team's "death"—the first of many, he decided to go back with Lilandra to serve as her consort. The team took a rather roundabout route going back through the Savage Land, Japan (where Banshee temporarily lost his powers saving the country), and Canada.

Meanwhile I had gone to Scotland with Dr. MacTaggert, and while there I met a dark, handsome stranger, Jason Wyngarde. Shortly thereafter I faced strange "timeslips" where I lived the life of an ancestor two centuries ago who was in love with an ancestor of Wyngarde. They were strange timeslips, dangerous, decadent, cruel and intensely erotic. But before me and the rest of the X-Men could investigate them any further, we had to confront Proteus, Moira's evil son with vast reality shifting powers.

After "killing" Proteus the X-Men returned to the United States, where the Professor had returned. There Wyngarde and the Hellfire Club made their next move. We had encountered two mutants. The first was Kitty Pryde, spunky, thirteen years old, and the ability to walk through walls. The second was Alison Blaire, the Dazzler. She was beautiful, brave, intelligent, with the power to turn sound into light. She could do anything really, except write decent pop songs. When we tried to contact them the Hellfire Club, under Emma Frost, the White Queen, and Sebastian Shaw, the Black King sought to attack us.

After defeating Frost, we tracked down the Hellfire Club, and there we learned the truth. I was not undergoing timeslips: Wyngarde was the real name of Mastermind, and his illusions had turned me into the Black Queen. But Wyngarde had made a fatal mistake. He thought I was just a powerful mutant he could control. In fact, I was really a universal, infinitely powerful force, with ramifications neither of us could comprehend. So when I broke free I first used my powers to drive him completely insane. Then I turned into Dark Phoenix. I easily defeated the X-Men, and then, to gain nourishment, I moved to the Sh'iar galaxy and made a sun supernova, completely destroying the billions of D'Bari who lived on one of its planets. I came back, and Scott and Xavier managed to work with me to put dampers on my powers. I was back to my old Marvel Girl self, and Scott asked me to marry me…

It was not to be. Lilandra did not think this was sufficient. And she was right. In the course of a battle over my fate, I saw Scott cut down, and the Phoenix power smashed through the dampers like wet toilet paper. Xavier got the other X-Men to throw their strength against me just long for to have some sense of sanity. I found an alien energy weapon, told Scott that there was no other way, told him I loved him, and blew myself to bits. There was not even ashes left, and I was quite dead. Or so it seemed.


	2. Ororo's Story

Ororo's Story 

Once I was dead, Scott simply had to go away for a time. Ororo took her place, and Kitty Pryde joined the team. First she was Sprite, then Ariel, then Shadowcat. Her first adventure was a horrifying one. In our time the mutant shapechanger Mystique had reformed The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, with the Blob joined by Pyro, Avalanche and the future telling Destiny. Mystique was a mysterious woman: she claimed at one point to be Nightcrawler's mother. Only later did we learn that she was in fact his half-sister; both fathered by our old forgotten comrade Eric Wagner, the Changeling. The Brotherhood planned to assassinate the anti-mutant senator Robert Kelly. Had they done so this would have caused a horrifying anti-mutant backlash where brutal sentinels ruled the United States. The Kitty from decades in the future took control over her present body and warned the X-Men of this. In the present the X-Men prevented the assassination. In the future, "the Days of Future Past," the surviving X-Men were slaughtered.

After encounters with demons and Dr. Doom our next battle was with Magneto on a strange island in the Bermuda Triangle where Scott had coincidentally been shipwrecked earlier. The X-Men were still not able to overcome him, but when he accidentally (and fortunately not fatally) electrocuted Kitty, he stopped what he was doing and fled. Then there was a reminder that the Hellfire Club was still active when the White Queen temporarily switched bodies with Storm.

Scott and Ororo were still wondering about who was now leader, when Corsair of the Starjammers reappeared. He had helped us at the battle of the M'Krann Crystal, and I realized that he was Scott's father. He had asked me not to tell Scott and I agreed, but when he reappeared Scott found out. He told us of a conspiracy by Lilandra's evil sister, Deathbird to seize the Shiar throne with the help of her allies, the Brood. They severely wounded Colossus and they kidnapped the Professor, but their first plot was foiled. Meanwhile Storm was nearly seduced, twice, by Dracula. While wandering on Magneto's island, Peter's sister six year old sister Illyana wandered off and found herself in Limbo, a strange timeless dimension ruled by the sorcerer Belasco. The X-Men sought to rescue her, but Illyana slipped from their hands for a second and when they got her again she was now thirteen.

Then the X-Men (minus the Professor) and Lilandra were all kidnapped by Deathbird a second time. This time Deathbird seize the throne and the others became prisoners of the Brood. They implanted eggs in them that would transform the X-Men into them when they hatched. But they didn't realize that Wolverine's immune system and adamantium bones prevented them from doing that to him. He killed the egg inside him and managed to free the others from the brood world. By a strange mystical process in the soul of the strange whale like creatures that the Brood used as planets, the X-Men were all cured of the eggs. They returned to earth to find that there was a final brood egg, in Professor Xwhen he had been kidnapped the first time. The brood egg has inspired the Professor to form a class of teenagers—The New Mutants, starring Cannonball, Wolfsbane, Karma, Sunspot and Mirage. But Xavier was strong enough to resist the egg. The Starjammers were able to clone a new body which, remarkably enough, could walk. Well, not immediately, it took a few months for the bugs to work out.

Scott went with his father to Alaska to see his paternal grandparents, who remarkably enough were (and are) still alive. At the same time being apart from the Earth, and her special link with its biosphere so long caused a personality change in Ororo. First the X-Men encountered the Morlocks, a group of mostly deformed mutants living underneath New York led by the skilled hunter Callisto. When Callisto kidnapped Warren to force him to be her mate, Ororo challenged her to a fight to the death. And then, without a second thought, this peaceful woman stabbed Callisto through the heart. Although Callisto survived, Ororo now led the Morlocks. Then Rogue, one of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, showed up at the school. She could not control her powers and begged for the X-Men's help. Ororo objected, but the Professor overruled her, (wisely as it turned out, since she soon became a valued member). Finally the X-Men all went to Japan for Logan's wedding with Sunfire's cousin, Mariko. In the course of defeating Mariko's brother, the Silver Samurai, Storm radically changed her appearance. Then Mariko abruptly cancelled the wedding. (They would never marry, and later she would be murdered by a Japanese crimelord).

Scott had met in Alaska a pilot who looked exactly like me, Madeleine Pryor. He could not reject the idea that he was a reincarnation of me, even after he proposed to marry her. And indeed she soon attacked and overwhelmed the X-Men. But then Cyclops realized that it was a plot by Mastermind. Behind attacks on the White Queen, Mystique and Mariko, he had worked to suggest Madeleine was really Phoenix. Once he was defeated, Scott married her and returned to Alaska.

Storm was now the leader, a more sexual, more ruthless Ororo, but still the strong and fearless woman she had always been. The X-Men re-encountered Mystique, trying to get Rogue back, the Morlocks, and even joined with Magneto on a distant planet to meet the most powerful entity they ever faced, the Beyonder. But the most important thing that happened was that Rogue was framed by the Hellfire Club for the murder of a SHIELD agent. In order to stop her, the government had Forge, a mutant inventor create a "neutralizer" which could remove one's power. In the course of trying to capture Rogue, the government hit Storm, removing her powers. Forge took care of her, and for the first time in her life, Ororo developed romantic feelings towards someone. But then she learned of Forge's role in removing her powers and left him. At the same time, a new member joined the team, Rachel, the daughter I never had, the daughter from "the Days of Future Past."

Ororo left the team, returned to Africa, and then returned. The Beyonder visited earth, and Professor Xavier, who was trying to recover from a severe beating joined with Magneto to keep an eye on him. Mystique and the Brotherhood, now a government sponsored "Freedom Force," arrested Magneto and he was put on trial in Paris. After escaping from a terrorist attack, a dying Professor begged Magneto to take his place. Lilandra and the Starjammers appeared, and they saved Professor X from certain death, but they were trapped millions of light years away.

Scott and Ororo fought over who would lead the team, and even though she was powerless, she was still able to beat him. Scott returned to Alaska to Madeleine who had just given birth to their son. With Magneto in charge, and with Rachel having manifested full phoenix powers, the X-Men were more powerful than ever before. It was not to last: Rachel suffered severe strains from her powers and when she tried to kill the Black Queen of the Hellfire Club, Logan stopped her by stabbing her through the heart. She managed to use her vast psychic powers to save herself, but the strange Spiral kidnapped her while other members of the team fought the super Sentinel of the future Nimrod. Barely had they defeated them when most of the Morlocks were massacred by the Marauders, a group of mutant mercenaries led by the hitherto unknown Mr. Sinister. In trying to stop them, Colossus, Nightcrawler and Shadowcat were seriously injured.

New members took their place: Dazzler, Havok, the telepath Psylocke and the strange other-wordly Longshot. As a counter-move, Mr. Sinister was able to brainwash Polaris into leading the Marauders. The X-Men fought the Marauders, and rediscovered Madeleine Pryor, left for dead in San Francisco, apparently abandoned by her husband. Storm went to Forge to regain her powers. In doing so the X-Men, including a recovered Peter, but not Magneto, encountered the Adversary, a vastly powerful entity. Forge gave Storm back her powers, but could only defeat the Adversary by converting their life essences, along with Madeleine's, to push him back. The world watched live as they appeared to die. They did not, of course, though for some time their reconstituted forms could not be photographed (it was never clear how that strange habit went away). Instead, they all went to Australia, and plotted to defeat Mr. Sinister. They encountered the anti-mutant apartheid behind the wealthy state of Genosha, Dazzler and Longshot fell in love (they would eventually marry and have a child). But their plans to fight Mr. Sinister had a serious complication.

Peter's sister Illyana had for some time been the semi-demonic master of Limbo. As she tried to keep control of her humanity, other demons plotted against her. They reached out to Madeleine. It was only later that the X-Men learned the truth: Madeleine did not simply resemble me, she was actually a clone of me created by Mr. Sinister. Confronting Sinister, who had kidnapped her infant son and nearly killed her, she accessed her own psionic powers and went mad. In a New York overrun with demons and Marauders, she sought to sacrifice her own son. While trying to realize what was going on, Ororo and the current team encountered the original members and had a big surprise...


	3. Scott's Story

Scott's Story 

I hadn't died at all. As it turned out, I had never been the Phoenix at all. Instead of being turned into a powerful telepath linked to an incredibly powerful cosmic force, I had been put into a cocoon. There, I recovered from the radiation damage that I suffered piloting down the shuttle while the Phoenix force somehow thought it was me and took my place. And so my cocoon rested under the ocean where the shuttle originally crashed until it was upset when an otherwise unimportant group of criminal scientists called the Enclave accidentally crashed their plane there. The Avengers and the Fantastic Four rescued me, and now that Magneto was leading the X-Men, they got me in contact with Warren. He Bobby and Hank had recently belonged to the Defenders before their erstwhile comrade Moondragon shattered it by attacking them. Warren gathered the original team together and announced that with his friend Cameron Hodge we would all form a new group, X-Factor. Disguised as anti-mutant hunters we would actually rescue mutants.

We encountered a few such mutants, such as the morlock Skids, the earthshaking Rictor, the flame throwing Rusty Collins, and Tabitha Smith, latter known as Time Bomb, then Meltdown. In the course of events, the Beast lost his fury form. (A year or so later he would regain it). We encountered "The Alliance of Evil," whose leader, Apocalypse, was far more older, powerful and power-hungry than we could imagine. And then during the Mutant Massacre, my sister vanished while Warren was seriously wounded and his wings injured. Hodge ordered that his wings be amputated. A shocked Warren took a helicopter ride which then exploded.

Some people thought Scott abandoned Madeleine. He did try to telephone her after he recovered from learning I was still alive, but his son had already been kidnapped. Later, when he returned to Alaska he was shown a corpse thought to be Madeleine's, while meanwhile the Marauders had removed all evidence of her existence. Later he would see her "die" again with the rest of the X-Men fighting the Adversary.

And we had bigger problems. There was one major problem with X-Factor: Cameron Hodge. Hodge was a devout Presbyterian who had unconscious feelings towards Warren. As this was not something he could easily admit, he repressed it into paranoid anti-mutant rage. He secretly formed an anti-Mutant organization called the Right, whose armored men wore happy-faces. He cut off Warren's wings, blew up his helicopter, and took over most but not all of his fortune. The worst thing, however, was what he did to Candy Southern. She had seen Warren comforting me and got the wrong impression. Before we could put things right, Warren was maimed, while Hodge waylaid her, imprisoned her and horribly tortured her.

We fought the Right, along with the surviving Morlock and new member Caliban, when we then faced Apocalypse and his four Horsemen. As we tried to stop them from ravaging New York we learned that Death was actually Warren, rescued by Apocalypse and his old wings replaced with powerful metal ones. We were able to convince him to rejoin us, and he became Archangel, but Caliban joined Apocalypse. We then looked for information about Nathan, Scott's son kidnapped by Mr. Sinister, while Archangel found Hodge just in time to see Candy die. This brought us to Inferno and our re-encounter with the X-Men and Madeleine. I was able to stop her from destroying her own son and she took her own life. We then confronted Mr. Sinister back at the mansion, and apparently destroyed him, though of course _he _survived. Even at the time, I could sense Bobby, Hank and Peter think Madeleine's death was too convenient, and I suspect they were right.

The X-Men returned to Australia. This was a mistake: they should have told Magneto and the New Mutants they were still alive. We briefly watched over the New Mutants, but they and our charges had to fend themselves when we were transported to a distant world and had to fight unimaginably powerful Celestials. The New Mutants and our young chargeswould end up being mentored by a strange one-eyed cyborg mutant named Cable, whose origins were at first shrouded in mystery, and then became needlessly and unnecessarily complicated.

The X-Men, after their confrontation with the Adversary had received a powerful gem that opened the Siege Perilous. Confrontations with Nimrod and the Master mold Sentinel, Polaris' "sister" Zaladane led to most of the X-Men entering it while Wolverine was nearly killed by a group of psychopathic cyborg thugs called the Reavers. He was saved by a young irreverent Asian-American mutant teenage called Jubilee who had stowed away with them. Pr. Mactaggert formed another team with a revived Banshee, Forge, a now sane Polaris, and Nightcrawler's magical girlfriend Amanda Sefton, while the other X-Men slowly reformed and a charming Louisianan rogue named Gambit, who had a tangential connection with the Marauders, joined the team. X-Men, X-Factor and the New Mutants all met fighting the anti-mutant apartheid of Genosha, who was working with what was left of Cameron Hodge.

Again X-Factor fought Apocalypse, and during the course of the battle, beings from the far future told us that the only way we could save Nathan was to entrust him to their care. Reluctantly Scott agreed. Meanwhile the X-Men reencountered Professor X and returned him to earth, only for us all to face the Shadow King, the first evil mutant Professor X had ever encountered, who had taken over Professor X's previously unknown son Legion (well unknown to me at least). We defeated him for good, but there was a price. Professor X lost the use of his legs, and Legion lost his mind.

So now X-Factor and the X-Men were recombined into two teams back at the mansion. The New Mutants now called themselves X-Force, Alex and Lorna and several other mutants now worked for the government as the new X-Factor, while Kitty, Kurt and Rachel had been working with Psylocke's brother Captain Britain and his girlfriend Megan as Excalibur, working entirely in Britain (and dozens of alternate reality Britains, but we don't want to go there).

Soon we had to confront Magneto, now definitely an enemy again. We also were part of an alliance with the Hellfire Club when the building was attacked by Sentinels led by the Upstarts. I switched bodies with the White Queen, she went into a coma, and her students the Hellions were massacred by Fitzroy, a cruel, sadistic energy absorbing mutant from yet another future. In turn he was confronted from another mutant, Bishop, a violent enforcer from the future. Bishop joined the team, partly because in the future he learned that one of the team was a traitor who would murder the others.

There was another climatic fight between Apocalypse, Mr. Sinister, Cable and Stryfe, the head of the anti X-Force, the Mutant Liberation Front. Xavier was nearly killed, and we ultimately learned that Cable was actually Nathan, who had grown up in the future, while Stryfe was his clone. In the end Stryfe was killed, the Professor was cured, and the mutant version of AIDS—the Legacy Virus was released.

One of the first victims was Mastermind. We went to his bedside and we nearly died trapped in his mind. We managed to get out, with his help and as he died he told us how sorry he was. Only now do I realize that I didn't really know him at all. Then Illyana Rasputin died. After the events of Inferno she had been turned back into the small girl she was originally. Her death shattered Peter, and so when Magneto showed up and asked him to join his Acolytes he accepted.

Yet in retrospect this was not such a bad time. We were all together, and despite such villains as Mojo, Exodus, Omega Red, Fabian Cortez, and the Executioner we were in relatively good health. Mystique and the government were sort of on our side, and we even made a half-successful attempt to redeem Sabretooth. And Scott proposed to me. He had proposed to Phoenix, and he had proposed to me shortly after Madeleine. The third time I accepted. We were married in a wonderful ceremony and nothing went wrong. Indeed, it made me forget the horrible thing that had happened to our former teammate a few months earlier…


	4. Magnus's Story

I never liked Magneto, I have always hated and feared him. It wasn't until just before my marriage that I learned that his family had been murdered by the Nazis, or that he had met and fought by the Professor's side in Israel against Baron Strucker long before the team was formed. He was our first adversary, when we drove him away from the missile base. Soon he would form the Brotherhood, bringing together the Toad, the Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver and most fatefully Mastermind. And so we fought a series of running battles until we encountered the Stranger who took Magneto back with him to his home planet.

He escaped twice, and then he involved us all in a battle with the Avengers that ended with the Toad being so angered at his continual humiliation that he kicked Magneto off his own non-metallic plane. He survived that of course, and we re-encountered him in the Savage Land. There he nearly took Angel in by the surprisingly simple expedient of saving his life and removing his helmet. I should have realized then that he was Quicksilver's father. He fought other battles before finally confronting Professor X and the Defenders with his ultimate mutant Alpha, who realizing his malevolence, turned him into a baby.

This was a key turning point, because when "Erik the Red" turned him back into an adult, his personality was different. He was younger, and since the X-Men had changed he was content to imprison us instead of kill us. Of course, we escaped. Magneto's next major plan was to create a vast magnetic apparatus in the Bermuda Triangle that could cause earthquakes and volcanic explosions. When a Soviet submarine attacked him with nuclear missiles, he sent it sinking to the bottom of the sea killing everyone on board. Then he destroyed a Soviet city with a volcanic expression, fortunately with much less loss of life. But when he accidentally, but not fatally electrocuted Kitty when she disrupted his computers, he was shocked enough to stop what he was doing.

As time went on Magneto realized that Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch were his children. He helped save the Professor from an anti-mutant fundamentalist Stryker, and then he was shanghaied with the rest of the X-Men to the other end of the universe by the inconceivably powerful Beyonder. Shortly afterwards, Magneto's Asteroid M was destroyed by the planet fall of the techno alien Warlock. Recovering he was helped by and briefly fell in love with a—"friend" of the X-Men: Lee Forrester. When the Beyonder visited Earth, Xavier begged Magneto to help him. When Magneto was put on trial in Paris, the terrorist children of Baron Strucker attacked the court. In the confusion a dying Xavier begged Magneto to take his place.

And he accepted. Now he was in charge of the New Mutants, the original five plus Magik, the alien Warlock, the Roman/Incan Magma and Cypher, who could understand languages. The first thing that happened was that the Beyonder killed eight of the nine, then restored them to life. After recovering from that trauma, the nine were involved in the mutant massacre, and then confronted Warlock's all powerful father, Magus. Amazingly, with Professor X's help, they beat him. They were gone for months and Magneto was angry for risking their lives. Soon, he would be proved right. With the X-Men's support, he had moved closer to the Hellfire Club. Magma soon joined the White Queen's academy, because she had a crush on the sublimely creepy Spanish aristocrat, Empath.

Then the New Mutants encountered a strange bird/man combination, called Birdbrain. They tracked down his creator, a rogue geneticist called the Animator, who was working for Cameron Hodge and the Right. In the course of the battle, the New Mutants liberated his charges, but the Animator shot and killed Cypher. Now with the X-Men apparently dead Magneto kept an extremely close watch on all the New Mutants, who felt that they had to take the X-Men's place. But this did nothing to stop Magik and her transformation during the Inferno conspiracy.

After Inferno, Magneto and the New Mutants went their separate ways. Mirage had previously forged a mystical link with Asgard, and had to stay there when Hel tried to use her to take control. Warlock was killed in Genosha fighting Cameron Hodge. The last remaining links with the X-Men slowly eroded. He worked with a consortium of super-villains to achieve revenge, tried to work with the Scarlet Witch, and helped Rogue when she emerged from the Siege Perilous. But then fighting against Zaladane in the Savage Land, he concluded that the only way to stop her pernicious evil was to kill her. And though Rogue begged for her life, he did.

Shortly thereafter he fought the recombined X-Men, while meeting a new group of mutants, the Acolytes, who claimed to be inspired by his example. In the battle it appeared that Magneto's Asteroid hideout was destroyed. But Magneto survived this and turned up at Illyana's funeral. In the trauma of his sister's death Peter joined him. When he responded to the activation of the Magneto protocols by the world's governments, he disrupted all the electronic systems in the world, and killing hundreds of innocent people. Xavier and the X-Men had no choice to confront him. Magneto responded by ripping out Wolverine's admantium skeleton. But the Professor defeated him, by using his mental powers to turn him into a vegetable. And so Magneto's mindless body stayed in his new sanctuary Avalon. But then Avalon was destroyed, with Rusty Collins killed in the process. It appeared that Magneto might have recovered. He briefly showed up, amnesiac, before he vanished. We did not realize that he, and us, now had to face a worse fate.

Next: Wyngarde's Revenge


	5. Wyngarde's Story

After our marriage, me, Scott and the other X-Men had to confront the Phalanx, the same alien-race as our dearly departed comrade Warlock. We also faced Cameron Hodge for the last time and though this battle ended with his death, my sister Sara was killed. As a partial consequence Banshee and a now recovered White Queen formed a new team of teenage mutants, Generation X, this time with our support. Almost immediately after that Legion recovered and sought to go back in time and kill Magneto. I'm not quite clear on what happened next, but at the end of it Legion was dead. As we worried about other things, such as the new group of mutant extremists the Gene Nation, a disturbing change in Psylocke's powers, the strange vast power called Onslaught, not to mention my getting pregnant, we didn't pay as much attention when an old Iron Man foe named Backlash murder Henry's off and on girlfriend Trish Tilby. Bad mistake.

Instead, it seemed that our most dangerous enemies were being eliminated one by one. Before the amnesiac Magneto could do anything, he was teleported away. Both Mr. Sinister and Apocalypse realized they could use his body as a source for the Unified Field Theory and as an unimaginably powerful weapon. As they fought each other, the X-Men and Shield, they were both killed, Sinister when his headquarters was annihilated by Apocalypsei, and Apocalypse when his space station blew up while under attack by Shield. Magneto was lost. Then we immediately encountered Onslaught, who turned out to be the Toad, using the technology that he had adapted from the Stranger's home planet. It turned out that he was actually a robot from the Stranger homeworld. The real Toad had been spending the past three years in Ireland, and had actually gotten married! With his help and Pylocke's "Onslaught" was defeated. And finally, we got a cure for the Legacy virus. It had infected Dr. MacTaggert, and Henry thought that it would soon spread and devastate humanity in a matter of months. But then one day the cure showed up at her lab.

Now I realize that the cure came from Wyngarde, that he had suffered from the disease, but recovered from it. He then used his powers to make us think that the dying Mesmero was him. He even pretended to be his own daughter to keep an eye on Wolverine. But for years, he had been planning this, working involuntarily for the Marauders, helping kill Apocalypse and Sinister. And now he was about to strike.

First, Ororo was shot in the swimming pool one evening. It was done in such a way that she would drown, the last instants of her life a claustrophobic agony. We soon realized that it was an inside job, and that only one of us could have done it. Then Magma and former Hellion Empath arrived and they realized that Bishop was the perpetrator. Unknown to himself he was the X-traitor that he had joined the team to stop. He was not in fact a mutant from a century in the future, but a special robotic clone of that mutant from the Days of Future Past. Empath proved this by cutting out his heart.

Empath told us that Mastermind was behind this, but this knowledge did not help us. First Candy's younger brother Oscar invited Warren and other X-Men to dinner, where he stabbed him to death. Psylocke realized that old Hellfire Club employee, now CIA asset Warhawk, was the link between Southern and Mastermind. But she was electrocuted in his Jacuzzi. Then Forge and the other X-Men tried to track Mastermind down, only for Forge to be assassinated by a Vietnamese telepath manipulated to think Forge was Henry Kissinger.

The other teams did no better. Generation X has been infiltrated by several of Mastermind's agents. Empath revealed that Husk was actually a new generation of super-Adaptoid. But one of the other agents shot the White Queen. We just managed to take the White Queen to the hospital when a bomb blew up all of Generation X, except for Jubilee, at Massachusetts Academy.ii While we were picking through the rubble the White Queen simply vanished.

For their part X-Factor was shattered in Washington when in a four hour period, Strong Guy, Dr. Valerie Cooper, Wild Child, Callisto, Sabretooth, Mystique and Quicksilver were murdered. Mastermind personally executed Quicksilver himself, although like the chauffeur in _The Big Sleep, _we still don't know who killed Mystique. Meanwhile Cable had made a devil's death with Fabien Cortez. To protect X-Force from the legacy virus he had arranged them to be injected with spheres that would protect them from it. Cortez then used the spheres to blackmail X-Force into working for him, by threatening to explode them. Cable had managed to find a way to jam Cortez as long as he was alive. But this got X-Force involved with a battle with Cortez, the Acolytes, Fabien Creed, Reignfire, the Mutant Liberation Front and even the last computerized remains of Stephen Lang. And they won, though Feral, Shatterstar and Deadpool died in the process. But then Mastermind showed up just long enough to kill Cable, and that meant that the now dead Cortez's booby trap went into effect, killing Domino, Skids, Rictor, Warpath, and Siryn.

As for Excalibur, the last remains of the Magus killed Cyberlock, and also killing Peter Wisdom and Alistaire Stuart. The rest of Excalibur was in a strange Alice in Wonderland dimension where Captain Britain was told the only way for him to live was to abandon Megan and live there. He refused, and back on Earth his dying old enemy Vixen arranged a meeting. It turned out she was Mastermind's half-sister, and she gave some cryptic advice. It also turned out that the entire restaurant was staffed by assassins and together they murdered Captain Britain and Megan. Kurt, Kitty and Amanda could do nothing to stop them.

As for the X-Men, former Marauder Scrambler showed up with old friend Stevie Hunter and told us of a place where we could fight Mastermind. It was all a trap, and in the chaos that broke out, Scrambler broke Banshee's neck and escaped. Then the Reavers and the mysterious Timekeepers arrived. The Timekeepers revealed that Jubilee wasn't a mutant at all, but an Ouroboros crucible, a temporal device disguised as a human fated to live its life over and over again. When Gambit tried to stop them they killed him by aging him seventy years in an instant. Meanwhile Wolverine killed the Reavers, killed the aboriginal Australian mutant Gateway who brought them, and killed Hunter for having brought Scrambler here in the first place.

The majority of the remaining X-Men were inclined to give Wolverine another chance, but Henry and the Professor insisted that he be expelled. At the same time Scott had showed increasing stress, even since he learned I was pregnant. When he learned that Cable had been killed he went into a rage. First he struck me, then he beat me, and then finally he injected me with a special abortifacient, killing our unborn child. He stormed out of the Mansion. Only to appear with Mastermind, who had rendered the rest of us helpless, ready to kill the Professor.

It was all an act. We knew that Mastermind was trying to influence Scott, and we deliberately played along, sacrificing our child to get close enough to him. Mastermind managed to delay the rest of the team, but Scott followed him. He severely beat him, but Mastermind was able to grab a gun. He shot Scott, twice in the head. Then before the body could fall he shot him through the throat. He then shot him in the chest, collapsing a lung, another bullet destroyed his pancreas, and a third shot hit his groin. Another shot missing the body, two more shots destroyed his right knee, and a final shot hit his right leg. Then he dropped the gun and ran away.

I felt him die in my mind. What do I do now after eleven years? I see the others. Kitty is still crying, and Peter tries to comfort her. Vera can't seem to fully grasp what is happening. Amara moves closer to Sam and looks at her watch. Corsair is still devastated, and the Professor waits to give his words of condolence. And as for Empath…

"Mrs. Summers, I just wanted to say…" He paused and moved closer. "Mrs. Summers…you _whore!_" He punched her in the stomach and then grasped her throat. Bobby, Sam and Rogue, with her arm still in the sling, managed to pull him off her. "This is all your fault! Everything that has gone wrong is because of you! All this blood is on your hands!" "For God sakes, calm down!"

"This is all your fault. You survived when all the Hellions were slaughtered. You've always been lucky. You don't deserve to be alive!" He sputtered, then composed himself and stalked off, slowly resuming his mien of aristocratic contempt.

After some decorum had been restored, Jean approached Professor X and the Beast. "What happens next?" asked Bobby.

"I'm leaving."

"But Mastermind will try to find and kill you," said Henry.

"No. As long as I'm with you the X-Men are in danger. I've got to go away. I've got to disappear. I'll be in contact with you and the Professor, but nobody else must know where I am."

"Why do you think that will work?"

"Intuition."

Bobby spoke up. "You do know that all of us would happily lay down their lives to bring back Scott."

"I wouldn't," snapped Empath.

"Shut up," replied Sam.

"That's so sweet of you Bobby. But you should be careful what you promise, now more than ever. Rogue, I want to give you this."

She took off her wedding ring and dropped into Rogue's hand. "I want you to keep this safe. Someday, I'll come back for it."

After she made her goodbyes, she went to the car, and drove off. As she neared the main highway, a taxi passed in the opposite direction. The taxi went past the cemetery and soon reached the mansion. Near the door it stopped and a young woman got out. Pulling a very large bag with all her worldly possessions she entered the mansion. There was a handsome man his mid-thirties in the living room and he saw her enter the kitchen.

"Who on earth are you?" he asked.

"I could ask you the same question. You're certainly not one of the X-Men."

"My name is Dr. John Pinciotti. I'm a geneticist, one of Dr. Cooper's friends. I have important matters to discuss with Charles Xavier. Now who are you?"

Having taken off her jacket, dressed in a T-shirt with arms akimbo and with her flowing locks of black hair, "My name is Danielle Moonstar. And I am going to save the X-Men."

NEXT ISSUE #342: The X-Men meet one of their deadliest, most powerful foes, and have a truce.

i Well, Mr. Sinister is certainly dead, that's not the whole story. See X-Men #53 for the whole story.

ii Actually, the team is still alive, and more than seven centuries in the past, and on a different continent. See recent issues of Generation X for the story.


End file.
